Source: Alphabet
On April 5 local time, Musk suddenly announced on X that he would release Tesla Robotaxion August 8. That is, automatic taxi project.
The reason why it is said suddenly is that just a few hours ago, Musk just stepped down to refute the Reuters report. According to the report, Tesla has canceled the high-profile $25000 low-cost car plan and prioritized the development of autonomous taxis. Musk commented on the report on X and said: "I'm lying again."
Self driving taxis and cheap Tesla are projects that Musk has talked about for years. Maybe Musk accused Reuters of "lying" to say that Tesla did not cancel cheap cars, but judging from the accurate release date of Robotaxi, the priority of self driving taxis is 80% higher than that of cheap Tesla.
The sudden announcement of the landing time of Robotaxi also saved Tesla's share price slightly. After the Reuters report was issued, Tesla's share price fell rapidly that day, falling more than 6% in the morning. After Musk "refuted the rumor", the decline narrowed. As of the closing, Tesla fell 3.63%. Then came the announcement that Robotaxi landed on August 8, and Tesla US shares rose 3.81% after the day.
Tesla's stock price has dropped 34% this year. The first quarter output and delivery report released recently surprised people. The delivery during the reporting period was far lower than Wall Street's expectations. Tesla, which has not released its flagship model for many years, will cut prices repeatedly in 2023 to stimulate sales, but the magic of price reduction is failing.
Musk needs "the next big thing" to rebuild market confidence. FSD has also made a lot of progress this year, and the time has come for Robotaxi.
1
Musk said that the Robotaxi self driving taxi project has been "pie in the sky" for many years.
As early as 2016, Musk published the second chapter of Tesla's grand plan, and Robotaxiappeared as a set goal on the company's development track.
In Musk's vision, Tesla will not only operate its own team, but also allow Tesla owners' cars to join the shared team.
Through the software, users can call Tesla Robotaxis just like online car hailing, but there is no driver in the car. "After getting on the car, you can sleep, read or do anything else on the way to your destination.".
The owner of Tesla can lie at home and let the car go to "work": "Let your car earn income for you during your work or vacation time, which will greatly offset, and may even exceed the monthly loan or rental costs."
On the Automatic Driving Day in 2019, Musk also made a special announcement to Robotaxi. This time he refined Robotaxis plan, saying that in the first stage, Robotaxis business model would be similar to online car hailing and car sharing. In 2022, Musk said that Robotaxi is expected to be mass produced in 2024 and throw away the steering wheel or pedal.
Martin Vicha, head of Tesla's investment relations, said at the Goldman Sachs Science and Technology Summit in 2022 that Model X and Model S are Tesla's first generation platforms, Model 3 and Model Y are the second generation, and Robotaxi's driverless taxi business will become the third generation platform. At the same time, it is still speculated that the cheap Tesla, commonly known as Model 2, will become the third generation platform.
The common point of the two is to serve the "extreme scale" of electric vehicles, which is a key word in the third chapter of Mask's grand plan disclosed last year.
But at present, even if Tesla's $25000 low-cost car is released, it is difficult to form an overwhelming competitiveness. The price of BYD's Qin Plus model dropped to 79800 yuan, which is no more than 10000 dollars. Xiaomi also handed over the first answer sheet of the SU7 series of electric vehicles a few days ago, starting at 215900 yuan, and ending at just over 30000 dollars.
Undoubtedly, this is a much bigger plan than the cheap Tesla. Musk has said many times that he hopes to reduce the cost of transportation tools to subsidized buses or subways through Robotaxiand FSD fully automatic driving. At the 2019 Automatic Driving Day event, Musk estimated this figure as: "Today, the average cost of riding per mile is about $2 to $3, and Tesla estimates that Robotaxi will cost less than $0.18."
As for the owners who join the Robotaxi team, "they can earn 30000 dollars every year".
If Tesla is cheap, it can stimulate those who want to buy cars to place orders at a price of 25000 dollars, so as to stimulate Tesla's sales. If Robotaxi achieves great success, those who do not want to buy a car will also want to buy Robotaxi, and Tesla can leap from an ordinary car to a financial tool.
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The checkpoint of Robotaxi's self driving taxi is of course not "taxi", but "self driving".
Musk was able to shout out the definite time point on August 8, thanks to the progress of FSD fully automatic driving.
At the end of March this year, Tesla pushed FSD updates, and its suffix changed quietly from FSD Beta to FSD Supervised. Beta is generally the name of the beta, while Srupervised means supervision. After three years, FSD took off the hat of "testing".
When the second chapter of the macro plan was released in 2016, Musk explained the beta suffix of FSD, saying that it was not the usual meaning of "beta", but to reduce the blind trust of consumers. At the same time, Musk said that the Beta suffix will be removed once Autopilot is about 10 times safer than the average American car.
According to the latest safety data released by Tesla, the safety factor of Tesla vehicles with FSD enabled is 8 times that of average American drivers.
At the same time of canceling the Beta suffix, Musk also announced that it would provide all American new car owners with a free FSD experience for one month. And reopen the free transfer function of FSD, allowing the owners of Model 3, Model Y, Model S and Model X to transfer FSD to new cars for free. You should know that the price of FSD in North America is 15000 dollars, and the optional price in the Chinese market should also exceed 60000 yuan.
More radically, Musk also insists that Tesla sales in North America must take users to test drive the FSD before delivery, even if this will affect the speed of new car delivery. This can be regarded as a nod to users. Musk said in his letter that almost no one realized how good FSD is.
Two hours before Musk announced that Robotaxi would land within the year, Tesla AI, one of Tesla's official accounts, announced on X that FSD's cumulative mileage exceeded 1 billion miles. In the attached figure, we can see that the slope of FSD mileage accumulation has become very steep since the one month free trial of FSD was launched in the United States at the end of March this year.
The accumulated mileage of FSD is crucial to the promotion of Musk's Robotaxiand even Tesla's automatic driving. In the second chapter of the macro plan, Musk said: "We expect that with the approval of regulatory authorities around the world, we need to accumulate about 6 billion miles (nearly 10 billion kilometers) of autonomous driving mileage. At present, the learning mileage of autonomous vehicles has just exceeded 3 million miles (nearly 500 kilometers) per day."
3
Musk has now announced the landing time of Robotaxi. In addition to the progress of FSD, external pressure also urges Tesla to come up with the "next big thing" as soon as possible.
The market has been waiting for Tesla's new products. Model 3 has been on the market for seven years, and Model Y was also a model four years ago. As the world's first Class A auto show, last year's Shanghai Auto Show also saw no trace of Tesla. Last year, Musk released the humanoid robots Optimus and Cybertruck, which are a bit of "doing nothing".
In the years when there were no new cars, Tesla repeatedly cut prices to stimulate sales. According to the data of Wells Fargo Bank, in the first half of 2023, the global car price of Tesla dropped by an average of 12%. At that time, the sales volume was strongly boosted, and the delivery volume increased by 19% compared with the first six months.
However, in the second half of 2023, Tesla will continue to introduce incentive measures, but the growth rate of vehicle delivery will slow down to 3%. Wells Fargo Bank said that this figure is "worryingly low". The year 2024 is just beginning. In January, Tesla announced another price cut, for example, the price of the new version of Model 3 rear wheel drive will be reduced by 15500 yuan, and the price of the new version of the long endurance will be reduced by 11500 yuan.
At the beginning of this month, Tesla released its production and delivery report for the first quarter of 2024. During the reporting period, it delivered 386000 vehicles, far lower than the average analyst expectation of 449000 vehicles, the largest margin of underperformance in history, and the first year-on-year decline since 2020.
Tesla's problem has changed from how to produce enough cars to how to make people buy more cars. Tesla's stock price has dropped 34% this year, and its market value has fallen by more than half compared with the peak in 2021.
Tesla is still the world's most valuable automobile manufacturer, but it is moving from a golden age to a difficult period. To regain confidence in Tesla, both consumers and investors need new incentives.
The self driving taxi was selected by Musk as the "next big thing".
However, just like the cheap Tesla will encounter external competition, players from all walks of life have already gathered at the track of self driving taxis.
Waymo, the driverless division of Alphabet, Google's parent company, operates commercial driverless car hailing services in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and is expanding Tesla's headquarters in Austin, Texas. Waymo has recently established a partnership with Uber for many years, and will use its driverless taxi in Arizona for Uber Eats meal delivery service.
In China, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other cities have launched corresponding policies to support driverless cars on the road. In Nansha District of Guangzhou City, Pingshan District of Shenzhen City and other places, Xiaoma Zhixing, Didi, AutoX and others have started the commercial operation of driverless cars. In Beijing, Yizhuang, as one of the high-level autonomous driving demonstration areas, had many enterprises, such as Baidu, Xiaoma Zhixing, Wenyuan Zhixing and so on, carrying out piloting or commercial operation of unmanned driving.
(Statement: This article only represents the author's view, not Sina.com's position.)
